This may be the hardest area for you to differentiate yourself in because most of the consultants you are competing against will have experiences similar to yours. But don't despair. Even here establishing your professional uniqueness is eminently feasible. Focus on your or your firm's consulting niche, your leadership experiences, and your goals.

Niche. Yes, it's early in your career, but already you have probably identified certain types of engagements where you shine or certain clients or industries that you feel really passionate about. Talk about them. If your resume and experiences enable you to justifiably call yourself an "environmental consultant" or "human resources consultant" then use this kind of differentiating language. It will help you stand out. Likewise, your firm itself may be recognized for a niche expertise that separates it from competitors. Perhaps it specializes in working with government agencies or law firms, maybe it devised its own proprietary model of Porter's Five Forces, or perhaps it was the first major consultancy to open an office in Kazakhstan. Any and all of these distinguishing features can help you create a memorable and distinctive profile.

Leadership. Early in their careers, not all consultants have yet had opportunities to demonstrate real leadership. If you have such experiences-e.g., you personally led a team of three junior associates in cutting a Fortune 100's customer-service response times-make the most of them in your essays. How did you motivate your team to work 100-hour weeks to meet the client's absurd deadline? When the client complained about one team member's solution, how did you resolve it?

Goals. We're not advocating that you conjure up unusual career goals just to impress the adcoms. We are suggesting that you really examine your goals and make sure they are more than just "make partner at Bain." Many of your fellow consultant-applicants will make exactly this mistake: vagueness. If your goal is to create a new kind of "middle-tier" consulting model for small-cap firms or to apply a new analysis model in an untried part of the world - by all means spell this out. Provided your goals make sense given your experience, "niche-ifying" them in this way can enhance the seriousness and distinctiveness of your application.

This broad group of uniqueness factors can encompass everything from your hobbies and personal obstacles overcome to your volunteer work with civic, philanthropic, religious, or sports organizations. Many times, applicants who have trouble making their professional experiences stand out find that their community activities or personal backgrounds come to the rescue. For example, if your job hasn't given you leadership experiences, your three years on the board of your community's dance company can certainly show your comfort with management responsibilities. And even an applicant whose consulting engagements have a "plain-vanilla" quality can greatly compensate by focusing on her difficult childhood in Zanzibar, her poetry awards, and her previous career as a baseball umpire.

Moreover, you can also use your community activities and personal interests to dispel the stereotypes that adcoms may unwittingly apply when evaluating your application. Management consultants, for example, are sometimes perceived as relying on "biz-speak" clich�s to communicate ideas and of focusing only on the "big picture." Your community involvements may counter these negatives by showing your ability to focus on and to speak in simple, human terms about the real-life problems of everyday people.

Finally, though any community involvement is great, even this category can sometimes unintentionally convey a "rubber-stamp" message if adcoms keep seeing the same community organizations in application after application. So, if you have volunteered substantial time with an organization that's off the beaten path or perhaps even an organization you founded, consider devoting extra emphasis to these experiences in your essays.

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